A metallic screech sprang up behind him. Joe bolted for the trapdoor, too late. He watched in dismay as the ladder snapped up into the floor. “No!” he said, slamming his fists down on the ladder, which was fixed to a section of plywood that sealed off the room below. He heard the patter of small feet running away beneath him.

A grim awareness engulfed him: the ladder had been thrown shut by the boy.

And then a second one: there was no escape.

Charlie leaped down the stairs three at a time. His heart was like a hummingbird trapped in his rib cage. He wondered if it was possible for his heart to explode. Hadn’t he read that somewhere? Or seen it on TV? He slowed down just in case.

He hit the bottom of the steps. Across the room was Grandma Rose, strapped tightly to a chair. Charlie ran to her. He yanked the rag out of her mouth and began to fight against her ropes.

“Get out of here now,” Grandma Rose croaked. “Don’t worry about me, Charlie. I’m going to be fine.”

Charlie knew she was lying. He’d seen that look before, a year earlier, when she came to live at his house. When she lied to him the first time.

He remembered it was a Saturday.

He always woke early on Saturdays to catch some questionably violent cartoons before his mom got up and turned them off. If he was up at six, he could catch his favorite: RapidFire, code name for the heavily armed ex-military brat who declared, on every show, “Heroes always help! No matter what!” But that morning she didn’t turn them off, even though it was nearly ten o’clock. She walked right through his room, in the middle of Harry’s House of Horrible Heroes, her least favorite show in the entire world. She stared at the screen for a minute and then just smiled at him and kept on walking. He felt so guilty he turned off the TV anyway.

Grandma Rose arrived a little after lunch. He was on his second peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich, another thing his mom usually prohibited, when Grandma Rose walked in the front door. He remembered her coming over to him and rubbing his head for a very long time as she talked to his mom. His mom was crying.

Grandma Rose sat down next to him and waited until he finished his lunch, saying nothing to him, just watching.

“Charlie, would you like to get some ice cream?” she asked after he’d stripped away the last morsel from the crust.

“Not really,” he said. “I’m kind of full.”

“Why don’t we get some ice cream?” she said, getting up and pulling his chair away from the table. “I think you’ll be hungry for it by the time we get there.”